Jill Palmer – Unsung Hero Awards

Nomination

Award Category:

Mental Wellness Champion

Individual or Team Nomination?

Individual

Qualifying Qualities

In these challenging times, nominators were asked to show how the nominee had demonstrated the following qualities:

Exceptional work ethic - going above and beyond their job description, especially in the past 12 months.
Outstanding achievement/s in work or outside of the organisation where relevant.
Drive for innovation and proactive leadership in these challenging times.
High level of interpersonal skills, such as kindness, empathy, loyalty and thoughtfulness to staff and patients.
A resilience considering Covid to their role and to the health and wellbeing of their colleagues.

Nominators Answer

Nominee's story :

Our employee survey scores prior to the pandemic highlighted the need to improve colleague support and it was one of our key priorities of focus, but they was no burning platform. However the organisation recognised in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic that our focus on wellbeing needed to be heavily stepped up with immediate effect, with dedicated resource to support our colleagues. Key stakeholders were brought together quickly and it was agreed to implement a 24/7 wellbeing support offer. There was no dedicated resource so we reached out to colleagues in different areas of the organisation where their substantive work was ‘on hold’ because of the pandemic. Jill Palmer came forward, she is a Samaritans team leader and offered her support. We produced a marketing campaign around the 24/7 wellbeing colleague support package, engaged managers and promoted our One Culture of Care approach (where we care for each other the same way we care for our patients). The marketing campaign worked and soon the demand for the wellbeing service, for someone to chat to, to be heard, to be listened to, to have quality time to spend with colleagues was extremely high. Jill was calm under pressure, engaged with colleagues from the phycology team to think about short, mid and long term propositions for wellbeing and how we effectively communicate and connect with our whole workforce. Jill also engaged with a range of partners to ensure we worked with people who could provide efficient and effective support for our colleagues, such as Socrates and Counselling Services. Jill ensured she provided an inclusive service, tailoring the support to individual needs to match the diversity of our people. She connected with Freedom to Speak up team and HR Business Partners to resolve local issues and gained support from the chaplaincy team. The organisation implemented a risk assessment for all and 4200 colleagues (out of 6300) completed the assessment. Jill spoke to thousands of these colleagues where they highlighted high levels of anxiety. Jill also facilitated listening events, went on site and hosted wellbeing surgeries. CHFT recognised dedicated full time / permanent resource was needed and a Wellbeing Advisor role was advertised and Jill was successful. Through her tenacity, passion and heart, she is recognised within the Trust as a ‘go to’ person to access wellbeing support. We are delighted that the employee survey scores highlighted a 10% increase in our wellbeing score and I believe this is down to the hard work of Jill who never gives up fighting to make sure our colleagues work in a fair and respectful environment and get the support they need to help people back to fitness. Unfortunately another statistic is that she has been involved in over 30 life saving incidents too. She has been an absolute asset to us over the last 12 months and I’m lucky to work alongside her every day.